Currently, DeMarco Murray is being drafted at his fantasy ceiling. As you can see below he is being drafted in the early second round or as the RB7. This is typically something I look to avoid, as I always want to maximize a players ceiling and avoid capping it. By doing this we have an easier time generating value in a player and lowering the risk of a bust. Let me explain this a bit further.

When drafting a player at his ceiling, you are essentially taking added risk that he doesn’t live up to his cost. If you believe that such players output can only achieve a certain amount of fantasy points, then giving a quick glance at current ADP’s can help determine his ceiling. The reason it’s risky to draft a player at his ceiling, is you have no wiggle room for unforeseeable circumstances. The instance here with Murray is that there is a very obvious situation looming about, and I will dive into this here.

The first thing that should worry us when we look at DeMarco’s 2016 splits, is the obvious drop off in fantasy points per game. From week 1 to 8 Murray averaged 21.41 FP/G (PPR) and in the remaining eight games Murray’s fantasy production took a big plunge. His average dipped 6.4 points down to 15.01 FP/G (PPR) average.

Looking over this it should be clear that he was trending down in the last eight weeks of the season. Not only did his yards-per-carry depress from 4.73 to a 3.99 average, his volume started to dissipate as well. In the first eight weeks, we see that Murray toted the rock an average of 20 times and also caught 3.5 passes per game. Second half his total touches dropped from 23.5 to 19.74, might not look significant but digging a little deeper we can start seeing a clear trend.

I went ahead and looked at the weeks where Derrick Henry missed (week 9 & 11) and subtracted Murray’s touches out of this equation. The outcome of this showed Murray’s touches dropped even further down to 18.83 per game. Using the games Henry missed we can go back to the original point of clarity. His fantasy outcome looked even worse at a staggering 13.68 FP/G. This would equate to 218.88 fantasy points for a 16 game stretch. Netting him a ceiling of RB11 in point per reception leagues.

Everything listed above is just the start of why you shouldn’t draft DeMarco Murray. I’ve laid out facts that Murray’s ceiling may well be RB11 and that it’s clear he is being over drafted at RB7. You also still have to worry about Murray’s lingering hamstring issue and Derrick Henry lurking in his shadow. These are all reasons I will not be drafting DeMarco Murray in 2017.

He retired from the NFL. He gave away most of his stuff. Now, former Tampa Bay Bucs offensive lineman Joe Hawley is traveling around the country in a tricked-out van, trying to fill the void that football left behind.